


Strumming my pain with his fingers

by detroit_become_writings



Series: soft!reed900 drabbles [2]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: ALL THE FLUFF, But mostly fluff, M/M, Tiny bit of Angst, brief mention of past trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-08
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-09-14 08:22:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16909476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/detroit_become_writings/pseuds/detroit_become_writings
Summary: Gavin and Richard RK900, who is still a pretty new deviant, are in the early days of their relationship, and Richard still discovers he has much to learn about the subtleties of human expression, especially when it comes to music.





	Strumming my pain with his fingers

**Author's Note:**

> Written from Richard RK900's point of view and inspired by the song "Killing Me Softly With His Song" by Roberta Flack, and this amazing soft!reed900 art by leetmorry.tumblr (http://leetmorry.tumblr.com/post/176386068643/gavin-is-a-guitar-gay-in-this-essay-i-wpng-the). Gavin and Richard are heavily based on these characters: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15749958/chapters/36626733
> 
> You can also find this drabble on my blog, https://detroit-become-writings.tumblr.com.

_I heard he sang a good song, I heard he had a style,_

_And so I came to see him to listen for a while,_

_And there he was, this young boy, a stranger to my eyes…_

[sonoric_analysis: identified//acoustic_guitar/mellow]

There was something different about the gentle tones of Gavin’s nonchalant strumming that morning. Sure, the guitar was always his go-to at any idle moment; any time he wasn’t too hungover to function, or trembling from the lack of nicotine in his veins, he could be found lounging on the couch in a grubby Nirvana t-shirt and underpants picking out the hook of an old song he used to obsess over as a teenager. And there he sat, in amongst the chaotic rubble of his disordered belongings all around him, cushions coated with thin, ginger hairs belonging to his feline and (until recently) closest friend, Toby, happily curled up and snoozing alongside him, tail occasionally flicking with contentment. Yes, it was just a normal rainy Sunday morning in Apartment 4b: everything in its place.

But there was something different about the way Gavin played today. Richard knew it, and he wholly admitted that his software, as advanced as it was, would never have been able to judge the subtleties of musical expression enough to be able to analyse exactly what was different. He just somehow…he could sense it.

[song_identified: Killing-Me-Softly-With-His-Song/1973/Roberta-Flack/]

Richard’s lips curved into a slight smile, his LED pulsing a gentle blue as he padded over to the lounge from the kitchen, a piping hot mug of black coffee in hand, brewed to perfection. But he didn’t approach Gavin just yet. He stood in the doorway, observing the human hunched over the instrument that hadn’t been tuned in about a decade, was missing a string, and yet somehow…somehow it made the most beautiful music imaginable. Much to his mild annoyance, the sound automatically engaged Richard’s unusual software corruption known as [thirium_cheeks.exe], and he immediately hoped Gavin was too occupied with his music making to notice him.

_I felt all flushed with fever, embarrassed by the crowd,_

_I felt he found my letters and read each one out loud,_

_I prayed that he would finish but he just kept right on:_

As the strumming continued, Richard leaned back slowly against the door frame, something about the way that Gavin’s bedraggled hair curled at the hairline sparking that kind of electricity through his system that he had come to appreciate, if not adore, by now. The first time it had happened? Well, he wasn’t so sure if “appreciate” was the word for it…it was more a bewildering series of system errors that he’d had to override quickly in order to process what was happening. It was messy…drunken. Gavin had awoken in the middle of the night, consumed a quarter of a bottle of vodka, Richard was just there, in his apartment, and it just-…that night.

That night…

Mere hours previously, Richard had sat beside the detective in his vehicle, chasing a bunch of hooligan Red Ice traffickers down the highway, trying to prevent them from crossing the border. Little could Richard’s high-class pre-construction technology have predicted that this mission would result in his deviancy; his cop partner having to harbour the trembling android in his own home for a night to prevent him being hunted down and reset by CyberLife; an all-nighter trying to prevent Gavin from drinking away his sorrows after reliving memories of his own past, filled as it had been with abuse; how Richard had found him in his room, tears sticking to his cheeks like paint, curled into a ball, trembling…how the new deviant had felt…pain. Pain.

_He sang as if he knew me in all my dark despair,_

_And then he looked right through me as if I wasn’t there._

Richard shuddered unexpectedly. His mind had wandered. His memory folder opened up multiple files at once, and he flashed back to the day they had first met in the DPD precinct. To the time the hot-tempered cop had slammed him against a wall in fury, spitting accusations at him, and yet Richard had felt nothing. To all the times he’d looked at Gavin, and seen nothing, felt nothing, but seen an identification message about his designated human police partner. To all the times Gavin had looked at Richard, and saw nothing but the emptiness of a cold, distant machine staring back at him through stony eyes, icy, removed, unmoved.

A machine that was destined to remain in CyberLife’s command for its working existence. Removed. Unmoved.

_And he just kept on singing, singing clear and strong:_

CyberLife failed their mission, just as he had failed his. No - no. He hadn’t failed. He had never failed…he had only discovered a better mission. A mission he was never meant to have known But Richard was an RK900, the most advanced prototype of his android generation: he always accomplished his mission. To hell with CyberLife’s protocol. To hell with his sleek design; his smooth software; his ability to scan an entire room and detect and analyse DNA and Thirium 310 samples remotely; to hell with his encyclopaedic knowledge of the entire of human history, of all scientific advancements to the nearest day, of how to master equations involving the square roots of negative numbers…

_Strumming my pain with his fingers,_

_Singing my life with his words,_

_Killing me softly with his song,_

_Killing me softly with his song,_

He was alive now. He was alive…and yet, all he wanted to do was throw himself down, humbled, weak, vulnerable, at the foot of the couch, to bathe himself in the soft chords that emerged so tenderly from Gavin’s fingers, those same fingers that so tenderly had run all over his synthetic skin and along his jaw, across his lips, down his back…

_Telling my whole life with his words,_

_Killing me softly with his song._

Richard was alive, and that meant he could die now. He could just die, laying there on the stained carpet of the apartment, staring at the gloomy grey clouds through the skylight, with the sound of Gavin, with the touch of Gavin, the sight, the smell, the taste of Gavin, enveloping him to the point his sensors ceased to function and his processor shut down…

And oh…wasn’t it a wonderful thing to be mortal. A _wonderful_ thing.


End file.
